The terrorist set to succeed slain Hezbollah chief Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah was most likely also killed in a recent Israeli airstrike in Lebanon, Israel’s officials said Tuesday.
Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said Hashem Safieddine, a relative of Nasrallah who was about to officially replace him, likely died in an airstrike on his Beirut base Thursday.
Nasrallah had been killed in an Israeli airstrike in Lebanon on Sept. 27.
“Hezbollah is an organization without a head,” Gallant said in a statement. “Nasrallah was eliminated, his replacement was probably also eliminated.
“There’s no one to make decisions, no one to act,” Gallant added.
Safieddine, a top military executive for Hezbollah, was expected to be formally elected as the terror group’s new secretary general after Nasrallah’s assassination.
Safieddine was the target of an Israeli airstrike in Beirut’s southern suburbs last week, with no word heard from the terror chief since the attack.
Hezbollah has yet to comment on Safieddine’s status, with the terror group complaining that Israel was allegedly obstructing search-and-rescue efforts for him Sunday.
Naim Qassem, the group’s deputy secretary general, said Tuesday that Hezbollah is still scheduled to elect a new chief in the coming days.
The terror group did not specify who would be elected.
If Safieddine was killed, he would be the latest among more than a dozen top Hezbollah officials killed by Israel in recent weeks as the Jewish state ramps up its attacks against the Iran-backed terror group.
Along with targeted airstrikes against Hezbollah’s leadership in southern Lebanon, the Israel Defense Forces also began conducting ground raids against the terror group to demolish its weapons depots and infrastructure.
The Israeli military said it killed more than 200 Hezbollah operatives during last week’s raids, with multiple tunnels and rocket-launching facilities destroyed along the border.
IDF officials and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the operations in Lebanon would continue until they are assured Hezbollah no longer poses a threat to northern Israel, where tens of thousands of people have been displaced.
The heated battles have also caused hundreds of thousands of people to flee southern Lebanon, with more than 2,000 killed in the country since the daily battles began between Israel and Hezbollah, according to the Lebanese Health Ministry, which does not distinguish between civilians and terrorists.
With Post wires
